


The Unexpected (and Fantastic) Uses of Shape-Shifting Into Other People

by mocktrialmaukingbird



Series: Random Old One-Shots [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, F/M, Falling In Love, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Other, Pining, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24809455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mocktrialmaukingbird/pseuds/mocktrialmaukingbird
Summary: Mendel is an idiot. An idiot that can shapeshift.She's also hopelessly in love with her best friend.-I wrote this forever ago for a writing contest at my old high school, so I decided to put this out because I was very much not loving the piece I put out the other day. Also, I promise my writing and plot development skills have gotten at least a little bit better than they were in high school.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Series: Random Old One-Shots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1794502





	The Unexpected (and Fantastic) Uses of Shape-Shifting Into Other People

The first time Mendel shapeshifted into one of her friends, she wasn’t even awake.

It wasn’t exactly her fault, either, since she was on the bus to camp and before she’d fallen asleep her friends had been ‘lovingly’ interrogating her about Oliver. So, of course, she was dreaming about the guy she’d been in love with for years- not that it didn’t happen all the time already, but her brain was just trained on him when her eyes slid shut. 

Mendel was having a wonderful dream in which she was racing a motorcycle down the empty highway, laughing as the wind whipped wildly around her until she reached her destination. She parked her bike and took off towards the cliffside, where Oliver was already waiting for her. The biker threw herself into his arms, and then a piercing scream echoed through the canyon. 

“What in the world?!” 

She snapped awake, sitting up only to realize that she was missing her ring, ever-present watch, and all of the bracelets that were supposed to be on her arms. A quick check confirmed that the earring that always curled over the top of her ear was missing as well. Her hands also looked…. slightly more masculine than they usually did. 

“Lilac!” 

Mendel winced as one of her girlfriends hollered, the sound drilling into her barely-awake brain and when she groaned, her voice was suspiciously rougher than it should have been. 

“Can you guys please shut it?”

“Oliver, how did you get on the bus without anyone noticing?” 

That was Lilac, one of the leaders. The girl looked up, a confused expression spreading across a face that she was slowly suspecting wasn’t hers. 

“What? Lilac, it’s me. It’s Mendel. I’ve been here since the summer before freshman year?” She said quizzically, and the other woman’s face melted into relief as she realized what was truly happening. 

“Mendel, look at your reflection in the window for me, sweetie.” 

Mendel looked, and then she yelped- that was definitely not her face. The brown, almost black eyes that had captivated her for so long stared back at her, and she ran long fingers through the dark choppy hair that had replaced her bleached-out braid. Her nose was smaller, straighter, and her crooked thumb was gone, replaced by a small scar on the inside of a slightly rough palm. She blinked slowly, taking in broad, strong shoulders and the handsome, pale-rose-coloured lips that caught her eye when he smiled at her. 

“I didn’t know I could do this…” The teen began, tone full of awe and wonder, curiosity getting the best of her as she ran a few calloused fingertips against a soft-but-angled jaw. “Awesome!” She shouted, before realizing that now everybody was looking at her, and she winced.

“Sorry.” 

“Alrighty then, as terrifying and intriguing as that was, Mendel, will you please change back into yourself?” 

That would be Belle, the youth pastor’s wife as well as the nurse that had patched up more of Mendel’s wounds than she could count. 

“‘Course. Sorry to scare you guys.” 

As soon as the leaders walked back to their seats, all of her friends burst out laughing and Mendel joined them, joy flooding her being. 

\----

The second time it happened, she was thinking. 

It would have been clear to anyone watching that Mendel was lost in her own head, pondering how exactly to build a wearable dragon that had a fire-breathing mechanism, and how to place a second, interchangeable aerosol in said dragon to make the fire different colours. 

Then her mind wandered to walking around a convention with her and her friends wearing said dragons, looking awesome in their meticulously-designed jackets and her in her gold aviators. Turning over what each person’s dragon puppet would look like, she stopped at Oliver. Would his be the antithesis of hers? Would it have eyes the same depths of sienna, stirring old embers in the core of her soul? Would it share the same mirth that his pale lips shone when quirked into a smile? And, oh God, what would the scales look like? To go sleek or rough? Pointed or rounded? Metallic? Matte? Organic? For sure, it would have a more muscled physique; thick neck but not too big, for he had to be big but not intimidating...

Mendel was (rather rudely) torn from her thoughts by her best friend, who was aggressively shoving at her shoulder. 

“Mendel, buddy, turn back into yourself, you’ve been in here for three days, it’s time to come out and sleep.” 

The other girl simply groaned. Three days? That wasn’t even that bad! 

“Record’s nine days. I was thinking, you know…” She stood, turning to crack her back and letting out a small noise of relief when it popped. “About finally getting around to making those mechanisms for the dragons?” 

PT just sighed heavily, gathering the technical drawings and tools from Mendel’s workbench, storing them on the wall where they belonged before gesturing for her friend to free the half-carved, vaguely reptilian torso from the vice. As she did so, the shapeshifter caught a glimpse of herself in the reflective metal embedded in the dragon’s open windpipe. 

Umber eyes stared back at her, and she wet pale, slim, dusty-rose lips with a tongue that wasn’t hers. She quirked a dark eyebrow, watching how the rest of the face moved, totally entranced in her reflection. 

“Oh my God, Mendel, you’re like a bird with that mirror. Quit it.”

And with that, PT smacked her best friend upside the head. 

Mendel reluctantly backed away from the dragon, taking it out of the vice and placing it on the workbench, grumbling under her breath all the while. Well, not her breath. Oliver’s. 

“Just… shift back into yourself, okay? I called in the backup just in case you decided to test a trap or something, so Oliver and Sangfroid should be here any second now.” 

And with that, she changed back. 

The soft chocolate gaze melted back into silvery-blue, specks of gold dotting her iris. 

Pale, dusty-rosewood lips ruddied up into a rough, violet-tinged hue, quirked into a grin. 

Her spine compressed, taking her from five-foot-eleven to a mere five-foot-five. 

Hedgehog quills lengthened and softened into a shoulder-length, bleached-out mess, which she quickly swept back into a bun. 

Just as she was shaking out her hands, trying to get the appendages to return to their long-fingered (and crooked-thumbed) state, the door to her workshop opened. 

“Hey guys!” 

Rosewood lips and umber eyes stumbled through the door, completely unaware. 

“What’s that look for? Did I miss something?” 

Mendel and PT just looked at each other, a silent conversation happening for a few moments before they burst into raucous laughter. 

-

The third time Mendel turned into Oliver, it was on purpose. 

In her defence, she’d been trying to get him to come over so she could get his measurements for at least a week now, and if she was going to get these dragons done in time for the con, she needed his measurements. 

But, of course, it had to be a full week of testing before the convention, so her oblivious Romeo was studying extra hard so he could pass with a better grade than a C. 

And, as she was loudly complaining about it to her best friend through the bathroom door (PT was showering, but who needs alone time, right?), an idea popped into her head. 

“Be right back, I think I have an idea!” Mendel hollered at the door, standing to her feet and taking off, stopping only to grab Shock- her wonderfully complacent panther chameleon- from his tank, heading towards her shed out back. Quickly fishing her monstrous keyring from the belt loop it was ever attached to, Mendel nearly kicked in the door of her workspace and hurried inside, placing Shock on his little tree, heat lamp above it making her skin tingle pleasantly with warmth for a second. 

“Sorry you have to see this, little buddy.” 

Mendel grimaced as her body began to change, the bones of her face re-knitting into someone else, spine cracking as it elongated the extra six inches, and a little twitch that made her new neck flick slightly to the side. Oliver’s Tourette’s. Just one of the wonderful side effects of becoming someone else- you, for the most part, got their ailments, or, in this case, their little physical tics. 

“Jesus Christ, finally. Now I can actually get those measurements.” She groaned, the rasp of Oliver’s voice making her throat tingle pleasantly. Snatching her measuring tape from the desk, Mendel set to work. 

A few hours must’ve passed without her noticing, because just as she began stitching the first of the two leather pieces together, the door of her shack opened, and in stepped a rather worried looking PT. It startled her enough that she turned back into herself quicker than she would’ve liked, and Mendel groaned as all of her muscles (and bones) protested simultaneously after the sudden change. 

“Mendel, I swear to the good Lord in heaven I’m going to slit your throat the next time you disappear and scare me like that.”

“I needed those measurements, dude. Girl’s gotta go what a girl’s gotta do.” 

“Whatever. Get in the house.”

-

The fourth time Mendel changed into Oliver, she got caught. 

Not by PT. Not by Sangfroid. Not even by Lilac. No, of course not. 

Mendel got caught by Oliver. 

She was, once again, on the bus to camp- Winter Getaway this time, but camp nonetheless. Considering that it was barely three in the afternoon, it should have been more lively, but quiet had settled over the bus and Mendel was on the edge of sleep, that warm in-between where you’re not quite awake but not quite asleep, either. It was peaceful- a wonderful silence before a raucous and chaotic three days. 

All in all, the air was still, and the rumbling of the engine was soothing enough that Mendel fell into the world of her dreams. 

Two hours later saw Mendel stumbling out of the bus, bleary-eyed and sleepy; the boys had beaten them to the cabins, and were doing their own thing until the girls got there. As per usual, Sangfroid, Nicolae, and Eden were seated on wooden porch of their designated cabin, the three waiting for their respective girlfriends to arrive. Oliver, having finally unpacked, joined them just as the girls began getting off their bus, and was understandably very, very, very freaked out at seeing the heavy-eyed version of himself stagger into the open air, the not-Oliver rubbing sleep out of their eyes before turning, clearly looking for something. 

Or someone, apparently. 

Not-Oliver met his wide-eyed stare, and almost immediately the nearly-black irises shifted to green. A suspiciously familiar grey. 

Mendel. 

“What the hell is that? How is that even possible?!” Oliver yelped, leaping to his feet and darting into the cabin, heavy door slamming behind him so hard the frame rattled. 

Nobody saw Mendel or Oliver for the rest of the day, but both made a reappearance during night games- if you could call it that. 

One of the other juniors, a skinny thing called Juvo, had the wonderful idea to scale a tree and sit up there instead of playing manhunt; instead of peace and quiet, he found Mendel and Oliver, strung up in a hammock between a few of the highest boughs of the beech tree, hidden by leaves. 

From what he could tell, the pair were talking, and only bits of conversation could be picked up from where Juvo was perched. 

“...not your fault, Mendel, who wouldn’t be dreaming of this face…”

“Would you shut up already? You’re making this love confession kinda difficult.”

Dead silence. 

Then, the hammock moved, and the unmistakable silhouette of Oliver appeared, moonlight casting his face into shadow. 

“You’re in love with me?”

A dark, bitter chuckle filled the air. Mendel’s. 

“Have been. For five years. You’re kind of clueless, you know.”

Not wanting to invade, Juvo hopped down from the tree.

If they weren’t seen until the next morning, nobody said anything. 

Mendel had waited long enough.


End file.
